I'm sure that I've never seen RAM hardwired into a motherboard,
although I can't say for sure that nobody ever did that. I
remember my old CPM machines, then my first DOS computer, a
Zenith with an S100 expansion bus, then a whole slew of PC
compatible motherboards that I've used from the '80s up to the
present in many computers that I've built for myself and other
folks, and I've just never seen it.

(Off the topic, but I've just ordered a 1.2GHz Tbird with a
266MHz front side bus, and I have to laugh when I compare it to
my first CPU, which was a Z80. 32KB RAM then, - yes KB, not MB -
in four rows of 9 DIP chips, if memory serves, for a total of 36
chips. 512MB now in 2 DIMM modules. My first hard drive, in a
later DOS box was 5MB, and it cost me 700 bucks. I wondered how
I would ever fill it up. Now I've got 75GB of hard drives in my
box, and with all the audio and video that I play with, I'm
almost ready to add more. We've sure come a long way in a short
time.)

As far as DOS and Windows goes, all of Windows 95, 98, and ME
(which is really 98 with some bug fixes and a few more bells and
whistles), still teeters on a DOS foundation. Think of a whole
house precariously balanced on a foundation of one cement block,
and you've got the idea. The house just totally outgrew the old
16 bit foundation. That's why you don't get to any real
stability in Windows until you get to NT. NT4 was better than
NT3, and NT5 (Win2000) is better than NT4, but it still has a
ways to go to reach the stability of UNIX/LINUX.

I'm anxious to get my hands on Whistler, to see where it's
really at, although I can't understand why MicroSoft is so
willing to make more enemies with the onerous licensing system
that they've come up with for their new products. I'm an avid
builder, and I'm always playing with new hardware, and therefore
I sometimes have to reinstall Windows to get everything working
right. Am I now going to have only a limited number of installs
available, for the new Windows that I buy, before I have to go
begging MS tech support for new license keys, or something of
that sort?
If that comes to pass, maybe it just won't be fun anymore.

Well, that's the end of my rant. Sorry if I got carried away.

Joab

At 12:34 AM 5/29/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Date:    Sun, 27 May 2001 23:34:22 -0400
>From:    Jack R Payton <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Adding RAM
>
>Huh?
>
>1. Since when did they star hardwiring the first meg of RAM
>onto mobo's??
>Even in the "good old days," when all they had was 1mb of RAM,
>that one
>meg was not normally hardwired. I believe that "conventional
>memory" is
>the first 1024kb (1mb) of RAM *recognized* by Windows, not some
>hardwired
>memory on the mobo. check it out. [Why would mobo mfgrs
>hardwire 640kb or
>1mb (1024kb) of memory on mobo's which might be used for other
>OS's which
>do not use DOS as a basic OS - or, need to reserve such memory for
>"System Resources," such as WinNT, Win2K, or WinXP?]
>
>2. DOS. I believe Win95 still used DOS as a foundatioin, and it
>wasn't
>until Win98 that DOS was bypassed by the Win OS. Even so, even
>with WinME
>DOS is still available as a boot (and shell) option for
>troubleshooting
>and correction.

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